Deaf Bill: The mummy that spent 80 years in the closet of an Alton funeral home

Mummified, spent 80 years in closet at Alton funeral home

Nathan Woodside, nwoodside@civitasmedia.com
| on
July 2, 2016

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The mummified body of Deaf Bill when it was buried in 1996.

ALTON — “Can we see Deaf Bill?”

Wide-eyed children queried with wide grins, kicking at the dirt with their Chuck Taylor All-Star sneakers, hoping to balm a boring summer day — not at the pool, not at the playground — at the funeral home.

It’s still there today at 727 Langdon in Alton, but no longer under the name Burke — just an unassuming building with no signs or oft characteristics — now zoned as a multiple-family residence.

No plaque or monument displayed noting the site of what likely thousands of Altonians will never forget as the legend of “Deaf Bill.”

Ingrained into the DNA of Alton is the allure of the weird. “The most haunted town in America” they call it.

It’s no marketing ploy by a promotion-savvy Visitors and Conventions Bureau. Alton is legit weird, and it gets no more strange than the story that was finally buried 20 years ago this summer.

William “Deaf Bill” Lee was laid to rest on June 24, 1996 — and here’s the kicker — after his mummified corpse stood in a closet at Burke Funeral Home, clad in only a diaper, free to view to any man, woman or child, for 80 years.

From the June 24, 1996 issue of The Telegraph:

“Lee, whose body stood in a small closet at Burke Funeral Home for more than 80 years, was decked out in a suit in the style of his day as organ music played, the smell of flowers filled the air and men stood by in suits.

About 350 people streamed in and out of the newly refurbished Burke Funeral Home from noon to 6 p.m. Sunday to pay respects to Deaf Bill, who attracted perhaps thousands of curious youngsters when he was a resident of the closet.”

“When you were a kid, you were just fascinated,” Barbara Gearing, who attended the funeral, said at the time, recalling the feeling of reaching out with trembling hand to touch Deaf Bill’s hardened skin. “He’s all dressed up now. He doesn’t look quite as much like a mummy.”

The report, written by Sanford Schmidt, who’s still a reporter at The Telegraph, notes that some makeup was applied to make the body look lighter and “more alive” than when it stood in the closet.

So, how did this scenario, seemingly straight out of a collection of odd urban myths, come to be?

Lee was a hard-of-hearing fisherman who lived on the island. Previous Telegraph articles about him report that he was a “local character” known to hit the bottle and launch into prolific preaching and swearing, loud enough to be heard on the other side of the river.

An item in the Oct. 11, 1902 Telegraph says it all:

“William Lee, better known as Deaf Bill, the Poo-bah of M’Pike island, was married Saturday morning by Police Magistrate Few. The bride was Matie A.H. Ferguson, of Paxton, Ill., who came to town recently and whose charms enamored Deaf Bill.

The bride was satisfied with her choice notwithstanding the fact that Bill can hardly hear.”

He made the front page July 2, 1914 Alton Evening Telegraph with a story of irony. He was serving time in the St. Charles County Jail for stealing tools from a mechanic when someone entered his house boat and stole nearly everything he owned — including carpets, dishes, the stove, the bed and all of his furniture.

Curiously, the only items the robbers didn’t steal were two shotguns and a revolver that Deaf Bill kept hanging from the ceiling.

He made headlines once again in the Oct. 23, 1915, issue of the Alton Evening Telegraph where a headline read, “Deaf Bill Lee is taken to hospital.”

Fellow fishermen found him felled near his shanty on the Missouri side of the river. Doctors urged him to seek medical help in St. Charles County, but the hermit was stubborn. He said he spent all of his money on the Illinois side of the river, so he should be Madison County’s burden — or he’d go back to his shanty to die.

He was admitted to the Madison County Poor House, where he soon passed.

No family ever came forward to claim the body, so funeral home owner Bill Bauer had a bit of a conundrum on his hands.

In 1996, the Telegraph published a letter to the editor from Merrill S. Rosenthal, a historian from Wood River, who said Bauer and his partner, John Hoehn, took the opportunity to perform an “experiment” in embalming to keep poor Deaf Bill from decay. They performed the normal embalming process, but skipped using any fluids.

“… the atmosphere has dehydrated him,” Rosenthal wrote. “It has drawn the moisture out of his body and left tissue and bone structure. If he had not been exposed to air but put in an airtight casket with glass top, he would now look like he did the day he died.”

So, when Bauer and Hoehn Funeral Home moved to 727 Langdon in Alton, a special closet for Deaf Bill was built — where he stood upright for decades.

On Sept. 5, 1932, the Telegraph reported that Deaf Bill was slated to be displayed at the Chicago World’s Fair. The report also stated that an “Egyptian Hindu” who had come to town with a curiosity show offered $2,500 for the body.

“We told him we could not sell a body,” John Hoehn, Bauer’s partner, said. “He told us he could make 10 times that much in exhibiting it. Well, after that we decided not to bury and so kept ‘Deaf Bill’ to this day. On moving into our new funeral home we had a special closet built for him on the first floor. We have had people from coast to coast view him.”

When Tom and Dallas Burke bought the funeral home in 1948, Deaf Bill stayed with it.

Funeral Director Brian Fine, currently with Staten-Fine Funeral Home, later became Dallas Burke’s partner. In changing times, Deaf Bill became more of a morbid burden rather than a ghoulish gaff.

“A lot of old-timers know about him, and not a week goes by that we don’t get a call from someone wanting to see him,” Fine told The Telegraph in 1996.

The funeral home attempted to give the curiously well-preserved body to the Alton Museum of History and Art, but the board of directors made the predictable decision to take a pass.

The partners called on the services of Rev. Michael Sandweg, who found that Deaf Bill likely had family buried in St. Frances of Assisi Cemetery.

And so, in late June of 1996, that became Mr. William Lee’s final resting place.

“Every person born into this world has a right to a proper and a decent burial,” spoke the Reverend. “So we bury him today and pray for his soul.”